


Tangled

by ScreechTheMighty



Series: Talk Some Sense To Me [1]
Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, Hair Brushing, Hair care, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Relationship, ask me about them, long haired wraith, lots of headcanons, mention of past mental hospital trauma, no beta reader we die like men, nonsexual intimacy, respecting another person's personal boundaries is Incredibly Attractive, so not quite romantic yet but ya girl's got it bad, wrote this instead of sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 03:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18683005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScreechTheMighty/pseuds/ScreechTheMighty
Summary: Wraith doesn't want to cut her hair. She can't explain why; it just feels like it should be that way. But long hair has its own problems, and when it finally gets to be too much, help comes from an unexpected source.





	Tangled

**Author's Note:**

> True story, I got the idea for this after re-watching simplynailogical's hair styling video.

Wraith had no hair when she woke up in the facility.

She’d hated it, even if she couldn’t articulate why.

The fact that she should’ve had hair was one of those things she _knew_ deep down, like how she knew she should have bangs, that she liked the color purple, and that she couldn’t stand most nut butters. It was one of the few certainties in her otherwise uncertain life.

That was probably why she was so hesitant to cut it, aside from trimming her bangs. Even after she joined the games, a place where hair down her back would be a disadvantage, she couldn’t bring herself to do anything but cut off the split ends sometimes, keep her bangs out of her eyes, and tie her hair up in a bun. It was a risk keeping it so long, but one that she was willing to take.

When her hair finally did turn on her, it wasn’t on the ring. The ring had been part of the problem to be sure, but she was able to keep the consequences of running through thick underbrush, being rained on for an hour, and not sleeping during a 24-hour match under wraps until she was safe in her room after their victory. She was tired. She just wanted to sleep. But she couldn’t, not when her hair came out of its bun snarled and tangled. Brushing it wasn’t helping.  Brushing just _hurt_. Her limbs were still shaking from the ring and the knowledge that they’d have to do it all over again next week and she was nowhere closer to getting answers and she was just so damn _tired…_ any other day, the hair would’ve been an annoyance. That night, it was a final spit in the face after a long, awful day.

Just as she’d put her brush down and was struggling to pull it together, the voices spoke up: _Mirage is here._ The whisper was followed by a knock at the door.

Great.

Wraith didn’t want to answer, but she knew how persistent Mirage could be. He wasn’t going anywhere until he got whatever it was he wanted. So Wraith opened the door, but only just wide enough that she could see him. “Oh, good, you’re awake,” Mirage said. “I just wanted to give you this back while I remembered.”

Right. He’d borrowed one of her knives. Wraith nodded and opened the door wide enough to take the knife back. He passed it off to her…

“Hey, are you okay?”

…but didn’t leave.

Wraith looked up at him. He looked genuinely concerned. She must have looked as bad as she felt if he was asking her about it point blank. Wraith froze underneath that concerned stare and the sudden weight of indecision. Mirage was a lot of things—irreverent, over-confident, too talkative, irritatingly flirtatious—but he wasn’t cruel. Not to her, not even when he was arguing about loot distribution. Besides that, he bragged about how nice his hair was _constantly_ (and, she’d secretly admit, he wasn’t wrong about that). Maybe…

Wraith opened the door wide enough that he could fully see the state she was in. “I need help,” she said shakily.

Mirage’s eyes widened. For once, he was actually speechless. Just as Wraith was considering slamming the door shut and never speaking to him again, he said took a deep breath. “I can fix this,” he said finally. “Give me a minute, okay? I’ll be right back.”

He left in a hurry. Wraith shut the door once he’d gone. Her hands were still shaking. _Shit._ Her hands. He seemed more focused on her hair than the scars that started on her palm and ran down her wrist to the elbow in lightning-strike fractals, but if he was coming back, she didn’t want to risk more questions. Wraith grabbed a pair of fingerless gloves and a long-sleeved grey sweater. Her mind was racing as she pulled them on. Was Mirage really coming back? What did he plan on doing? Would he try to cut it? What if he had no _choice?_ What if the damage was too bad?

Her chest felt tight. Wraith sat down and forced herself to breathe. In slowly. Hold. Out slowly.

She was mostly calm by the time someone knocked on the door again. The knock sounded strange, like someone was kicking the door. When she answered, she realized why: Mirage had a full box in his arms. “So, I brought some extra supplies,” he said, “and then…didn’t realize until I was here that I don’t know if you drink.”

Wraith didn’t usually, but tonight she could use it. “What do you have?” she asked as she stepped aside.

“Uh, bit of this, bit of that, lot of small bottles…” He set the box down carefully on a table—one of the only pieces of furniture in the room. Everyone who stayed in the on-site housing got a small table, chair, bed, and dresser; you could bring in your own furniture, but she didn’t have anything to bring. Her dresser drawers weren’t even full. “...pretty good knowledge of how to make a mixed drink. What’s your poison?”

She didn’t want to make a decision, and the voices didn’t really help with drink selections. “Surprise me, I guess.” Wraith looked in the box; her heart nearly stopped at the sight of scissors tucked away between a few bottles. “Mirage, I don’t…”

Mirage froze, a small bottle of alcohol in each hand. “Uh…not a whiskey gal…?”

“I don’t want you to cut it. Please.”

“ _Oh_.” He glanced down at the scissors. “Okay. Okay, I won’t, I promise. It might take me a while to, uh…” He looked at her hair, grimacing as he tried to figure out the nicest way to tell her that she looked like shit. “…get that sorted out.”

“I don’t care.” Her voice was shaking again. Her hands and wrists were starting to ache. “Just… _please_ don’t cut it.”

“Hey.” Elliot put down the small bottles and looked her in the eyes. “I _promise_. Okay?”

He said _promise_ so slowly and carefully, probably trying not to stumble over the word. Wraith nodded. “Okay. Okay.”

“…you want me to make this a double?”

Wraith laughed quietly. How did he _do_ that? It wasn’t the first time he’d made her laugh when things were rough. It bordered on frustrating, but after the night she’d had, a laugh was welcome. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I think I could use that.”

And that was how Wraith ended up sitting cross-legged on her bed with a mystery drink in her hands while Mirage sat behind her and examined the state of her hair. “I’ll be gentle as I can, but you might feel a bit of tugging,” he said after a few seconds. “This is…okay, right? With you?”

Was it?

If she let herself think about it, Wraith would admit that the proximity was making her antsy. It wasn’t distrust; it was just _strange_ to see him out of the ring, in regular clothes (sweatpants and a t-shirt, in his case, fuzzy socks, hair still a bit damp as if he’d just showered), in her room. If she thought about it even longer, the thought that he was about to _touch her hair_ —something she’d never let anyone do, not that she could remember—made her heart race. But she couldn’t let herself think about it. She wanted this fixed. Everything else was secondary.

“I’m okay,” she said quietly. “Do what you have to do.”

She couldn’t help tensing when he started working something into the tangled parts; he froze, unmoving, until she relaxed. The drink helped; she didn’t know if it had a name, but she thought she tasted cinnamon. Mirage was quiet at first; she didn’t think she’d ever heard him be so quiet. “I didn’t know your hair was so long,” he said finally. “When was the last time you cut it?”

“I trimmed some of the dead ends off a few weeks ago,” she said. “And cut my bangs.”

“You do that yourself? Shit, you do like living dangerously.” Wraith felt a slight tugging as Elliot started brushing. “Do you have a detangler comb?”

“…I have a hairbrush?”

He stopped brushing immediately. “Didn’t that _hurt?!_ ”

_Yes._ “Should I not have done that?”

“I mean, you _could_ do it, in a pinch, but…I’m getting you a detangler comb later. Trust me, it’s so much easier…” He started on her hair again. “Better for your hair, too.”

He fell silent again. Wraith finished her drink. Aside from the occasional tug, always accompanied by a soft apology, the process was much less painful than it had been earlier. The lack of drink to focus on made her focus on the proximity again. Mirage felt like he was radiating warmth. Aside from the hands manipulating her hair, he wasn’t touching her, but it wouldn’t take much. She had a sudden flashback to the time he’d fallen asleep with his head on her shoulder. They’d both been so exhausted when the match had ended that they’d nodded off on the return shuttle. His hair had been tickling her cheek. It had been softer than she’d expected.

She hadn’t minded.

She didn’t think she minded the closeness now, except that it bothered her that she didn’t mind. She didn’t want to think about the implications of that. Or about how _he_ might feel about sitting right behind her, on her bed, after hours, and touching her hair.

_Shit. Say something._

“So, uhm…” Wraith cleared her throat. “Where’d you learn to do this?”

“I used to help my mom out with her hair. She wasn’t good at braiding.” Mirage sounded immediately fond. “I went through a long hair phase back in the day, too. Got a lot of tips from her and, uh…”

He hesitated, going so far as to stop brushing. “It didn’t suit me. I cut it off again after a year.”

Wraith noted the hesitation, but didn’t ask questions. Mirage had been, so far, good about not bothering her about her past. Doing the same for him was the least she could do. “Are there pictures?”

“None that _you_ get to see. People aren’t allowed to know I looked like a nerd.”

“You’re saying that as if you don’t now.”

“ _Ouch._ I’m being nice to you, here. You don’t gotta come for me like that.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you. You get one free pass a month. Don’t waste it on cheap shots.” He stopped brushing and resumed applying something to her hair. “You’re going to want to wash this out when you’re done. It’ll get the tangles out, but if your hair gets greasy easily…hey, what conditioner do you use?”

Wraith wasn’t sure how to answer that. The silence must have been answer enough, because Elliot stopped again. “Wraith, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but you know you have hair care options, right?”

“I know, I just…” Never worried. She hadn’t put much thought into her appearance since she’d escaped. It hadn’t seemed to matter. “…never had to worry before. Don’t suppose you have any advice on that?”

“Uhhh…not for your hair type, I’m afraid.” He kept working on her hair. “I can look into it? But I’m used to thicker hair. And curlier.” Mirage adjusted his seating position and had to rest a hand on her shoulder to steady himself. The sudden touch made her heart skip a beat. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Was it?

It occurred to her, then, that Mirage wasn’t casually physical with her the way he was with other people. The sleeping incident aside, she was pretty sure he’d only touched her for utilitarian purposes—giving her a hand up on the field, a shoulder to lean on when she was injured and had a hard time walking, maybe a hand shake if he was feeling affectionate. He had touched her a few times early in their partnership—a prolonged touch on the shoulder, leaning against her during an interview, trying for a fist bump that she didn’t return—but he’d stopped fairly quickly. She’d never _told_ him to stop; he must have picked up on her discomfort on his own. Even now, after that brief touch, he was leaning away so he wasn’t crowding her.

She felt a sudden flood of gratitude. It seemed a small thing, but when your first memories were of being restrained, forced medication, and frequently manhandled in and out of her cell, day in and day out until she finally escaped, it was anything _but_ small.

“I’m a genius!” Mirage said abruptly.

The statement jarred her from her thoughts. Wraith was about to quip at him about his ego when she realized that he wasn’t carefully combing through individual sections of hair. He was brushing through the full length, without any resistance.

He’d _actually fixed it._

Her chest felt tight again, not with anxiety, but with a sudden and overwhelming sense of relief and gratitude. Before she could say anything, Mirage kept talking: “Like I said, you’re gonna want to wash this stuff out…comb your hair while it’s still damp, let it air dry…here.” He moved to sit by her side and handed the comb to her. “You can borrow this. I owe you one for the knife.”

Wraith didn’t trust herself to speak as she took the comb. Part of her felt like an idiot for being so close to tears over her hair, but she couldn’t help it. It was probably the lack of sleep. “Just try not to sleep on it while it’s damp, okay? It’ll just get all tangled again. I mean, unless you want to spend more quality time with me…” She saw him wince slightly, as though he couldn’t believe those words had come out of his mouth, but he recovered quickly. “Uh, anyway.” He stood up and started gathering up his things. “I’ll get out of your hair. _Hah._ Literally.”

He sounded embarrassed. Probably because she had been sitting there, unspeaking, like a ghost. Wraith cleared her throat. “Elliot?”

He froze. She froze, too. She hadn’t meant to call him that. It had just slipped out. No sense in correcting herself; he’d already heard it.

“Thank you,” Wraith finished.

“…uh…yeah. No, uh, no pruh, no p-problem.” He was blushing. He tried to hide it by ducking his head and busying himself gathering up his things, but she saw. “Anything for a team member.”

He finished re-boxing his stuff and started for the door. Wraith stood up to help him with the door. There was only so much space; they were in close proximity again, only about a foot apart as she held the door for him. The closeness let her see that he still looked flustered. His brown eyes fixed on hers, just for a second.

“Thank you,” she repeated with a smile.

He smiled back. Her heart skipped another beat. She didn’t let herself think about that until after he had left and the door was closed.

“…shit,” she breathed. Wraith pulled off her gloves, rubbed her eyes, and then pressed her thumb against the scar on her palm. “Don’t suppose you have anything to say about this?” she asked.

The voices were silent.

Of course they were.

She did as he told her—showered, washed her hair, combed it carefully, let it dry. She took the time to braid it, though she nearly fell asleep several times before all was said and done. She put the comb within her line of sight as she lay down to sleep.

It felt like a very strange dream the next morning. Only the comb let her know that it had happened. Wraith lay there for a while, staring at it, re-playing the memory over and over in her mind. Trying to sort through how she felt about it all.

She couldn’t get the memory of him smiling out of her head. Or how careful he’d been with her. It was a side of him she hadn’t seen before.

She’d like to see more of it, she thought.

But it was a dangerous thing to consider, so she set it aside for now. She went through her morning routine, not letting herself think about Mirage, not even when she used the borrowed comb instead of her hairbrush. She kept it together, right until she saw him sitting at a table in the dining hall. He smiled at her as she approached. “You look nice today,” he said.

He was casually flirting, she knew, the usual Mirage bravado on full display. But underneath it all—somewhere in the eyes—Wraith thought she saw a bit of Elliot, too.

“Thanks,” she replied casually. “I had some help.”

The bravado slipped away, leaving behind only a genuine smile.

She’d like to see more of that, too.

Maybe that was safe to consider.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at screechthemighty if you want to ask me about my headcanons or marvel at the grab bag of fandoms I'm constantly reblogging.


End file.
